Saw a couple of things in the newspaper that had me thinking. One was an article in the New York Times about Supreme Court appointments. The author, Jeffrey Rosen, tries to determine what conservatives mean by the term "strict constructionist".
The phrase is surprisingly malleable. "I've never believed in the term strict constructionist," said Charles Fried, who was solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. "I've thought it was a code word for I'm not sure exactly what."
The other thing was a letter to the editor by Ray Reaves in the Post-
Gazette. After two letters on the Humane Society's pinch test, and tucked in between two letters on values, Reaves makes the point that elections to come will be won by thoughtful people only if we can make more of them, and the only way to make more of them is to teach them how to think.
Learning to assess the source and credibility of data and to subject it to honest analysis is a critical skill for objective decision-making without which many citizens are subject to the type of manipulation we witnessed in this election.To wit, let's look at the above letter from Enzo Grilli:
"Doing whatever you can to prevent people from dying in a war" is an oxymoron -- people die in war by definition.But it's not an oxymoron if you don't have the war in the first place, and the war we're fighting in Iraq is based on, what I think, are three faulty assumptions: 1) We had credible evidence of Iraq's possession of mass destruction; 2) Iraq had strong ties with al Qaeda; and 3) Starting a war with Iraq would reduce the power of terrorists.
I believe we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq if the powers-that-be, and the public-at-large, were better at checking and assessing the information they had. So even if our faith did not lead us to believe that peace was the answer in this case, our heads should have told us better.
Reaves is right. No matter how much we fight the media, or take our battle to the polls, the real victories will be won in our schools and in our families. Or as the Jesuits say, "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man."
Posted by mastr at November 16, 2004 11:16 AM